Nussbaum describes her book as
…an examination of the aspiration to rational self-sufficiency in Greek ethical thought: the aspiration to make the goodness of a good human life safe from luck through the controlling power of reason.[1]
Human practical rationality is not a game played on a smooth playing surface, but rather one with surprising bumps and hollows.[2] Nussbaum finds in the philosophical and literary sources of ancient Greece two ‘normative conceptions’ of how would-be moral agents can respond to this condition. On the one hand, the agent can assert control through uninterrupted, pure activity and through emphasis on the rational aspect of human being over against the merely physical. The eudemonistic life envisaged here is solitary, unimpaired by reference to others. Plato in particular articulates a version of this response, though not uncritically.
On the other hand, the moral agent can be seen as sharing both active and passive components, with the recognition that there are external sources of power that inevitably limit the control one may reasonably expect to have over events. Under this conception, the eudemonistic life is lived alongside and with the cooperation of friends and loved ones.[3] Nussbaum’s Aristotle gives expression to a version of this second normative conception (which Nussbaum herself clearly favours).
A third way? What could a Christian version add?
[1] Martha Craven Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 3
[2] Nussbaum’s suspicion that the problem of luck - and so, risk – is one keenly felt by contemporary people is confirmed by Anthony Giddens, who argues that the culture of late modernity can be regarded as a ‘risk’ culture. Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Blackwell, 1991), p. 109-43
[3] Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, p. 20-1
6 comments:
I assume you're fishing for a vertical dimension? That we are not simply active-passive horizontally, but passive-active vertically? (i.e. our primary relationship to God is one of receiving: life and new life).
Was just thinking about this on Sunday night talking with a guy who's been coming to church but clearly identifies himself as a Nietzschean existentialist (with a bit of elitism fascism thrown in for good measure). Very smart guy in many ways, but had little space (and only purely pragmatic) for allowing others to help him. Very much belonged to Nussbaum's first conception. I suggested that becoming Christian for him (something he is considering) would involve learning to receive. And learning to give for more than pragmatic reasons.
Oh, and love the new name. Though I suspect your non-Antipodean (= 'Podean'?) readers might miss the reference to Samuel Marsden, Australia's second Anglican chaplain, whose most memorable contribution to our history was to so co-operate with the administration of 'justice' by the ruling class in the early Sydney penal colony that he gained the nickname 'the flogging parson'.
And I claim I've been calling you that for months - just not to your (virtual) face...
A technical aside: How do you do the footnotes?
footnotes: I cut and paste from word docs.
Byron! Well I think it is a great name!
Yes: Nussbaum is a bit girly about this (not that there's anything wrong with that)... she says the masculinist Platonic option is untenable because it fails to acknowledge our specifically human qualities: bodility, emotions, ties to others etc.
Girly or not: she is right I think.
Why do we need an ontology at all?
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